Monday, May 09, 2011

...on a chilly, rainy, blustery spring day here in the hills of Devon.

"If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine." - Diana Wynne Jones

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The picture above comes from Alan Lee, who usually lives down the street from us here in Devon, but who is currently in New Zealand working on the filming of The Hobbit. Alan writes: " So this is where I happen to be; the view on tuesday morning before setting off for a day's work in Wellington, New Zealand."

The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

Above and below: the views from Ellen Kushner's windows in New York City. Ellen says: "The first picture is actually the photo from our (Delia Sherman's & my)
livingroom, where I have gone to spread out to edit the new Bordertown
anthology, as my study had gotten to the 'so
cluttered I can't even think in here' stage. The view from my study, in
the next room, is pretty much the same, though, minus the fairy. He
may seem a bit twee, but remember that we live in Manhattan - and in a
neighborhood full of kids; so maybe one or two of the multitude who are
walked to and from school by various caretakers have looked up and seen
the profile against our curtains at night, and wondered.... The
stained glass was a wedding present from our amazing friend, the Boston
glass artist Alice Johnson.

"We really do live in the concrete heart of NYC; I feel incredibly lucky
to have the trees of Riverside Park out my window. In summer, it's a
thick wall of green - but in winter, the bare trees reveal layer after
layer of city landscape - on a clear day, all the way across the Hudson
River to New Jersey."

The second picture is the view from Ellen's study window, taken during the snow storms of this past winter.

The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Above and below: The view from my husband Howard's office/music-room window, which is in an alpine cabin in our back yard, up against the woods. That's Tilly, of course, on the little balcony in front of the window. Dartmoor is in the distance (beyond the green hills and trees), crowned with the granite peak of Kestor -- near which there are Bronze Age ruins.

*
The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

Above: A photograph from John Bridges, one of the good people behind the Mythic Imagination Institute in Atlanta. "It's a view of the backyard from my kitchen breakfast nook in Stone Mountain, Georgia," John writes. "Stone Mountain is a part of the Atlanta Metro Area, and I live about a mile as the crow flies from the actual giant piece of exposed granite that gives the
area, and the park that contains it, its name. My dog Django was napping when
I took this, otherwise he probably could be seen out in 'his' yard,
patrolling for squirrels or being surprised by the occasional deer that
visit the neighbor's yard in the early morning. You can glimpse a string
of faded Tibetan prayer flags strung between a couple of branches
towards the back of the yard. To the right is my favorite room in the
house: the enclosed porch. Its a great place to sit and read or sketch
on a breezy evening, though we're already starting to feel the end of
spring here and the start of a steamy Atlanta summer."

*
The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Above: A window view from artist & musician Oliver Hunter in Melbourne, Australia. He writes: "I hate to have left this so late but the schedule and the lengthening
nights (my south-facing window is usually shrouded by gloom at this time
of year) have left me few windows of opportunity, excuse the pun. But
this morning was gloriously sunny for about 5 minutes, long enough for
me to snap you this."

*
The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

Karen Shaffer has sent in a clever series of window views of various kinds, taken during her trip to Los Angeles past this week:

First, the window view from the airplane:

Next, the view from her car window:

A window view of the Hollywood Hills:

Looking out the window straight down on Sunset Boulevard:

Full moon over LA through a hotel window:

And (my favorite), an etched hotel window, with city lights beyond:

Next, we have a series of window views from Karen's home -- a farmhouse in rural Virginia shared with her husband, Charles Vess, and an assortment of animals:

Prudence's view through the bay window:

Two views from the patio windows:

The view out the kitchen window (with
Kaylee napping):

The view through the etched windows of
the Little Studio (yet another napping spot for Kaylee):

The view from an upstairs window:

*
The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The view from Freyalyn Close-Hainsworth's window this morning, in northern England. "You'd think we were in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside," she says. "In
fact there's a whopping, noisy main road just below the view, between
out flat and the field, and we're just between Leeds and Bradford, but
there are fields with horses in just beyond, and there Buck Woods and
the Aire river and the Leeds-Liverpool Canal up towards the hills. And
the sun is shining...."

*
The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

Above: Two photographs from Rossitsa, a puppet
theatre director in Bulgaria. The first shows her current view, the
second shows how that same view looked during the past winter. She says: "The
window looks at the church St. George, the patron saint of my town
Rousse in Bulgaria. It's always exciting and inspiring to watch through
it how the seasons change. It's so beautiful...and calming!"

Rossitsa's recent puppet show "Rapunzel," inspired by the oldest versions of the story, has just won has the Best Performance Award and the Children's Jury Award at Lutfest, the International Puppet Festival in Sarajevo, Bosnja and Herzegovina. Congratulations!

Below: A Los Angeles window view from artist & writer James Graham, who is recuperating from a motorcycle accident.
James says: " The view from my home studio window is boringly
bucolic. I really
can't believe I live here. This is the first time I have lived in a
house and not a warehouse since leaving the Brooklyn hippy slum I grew
up in
thirty one years ago. I still feel like a trespasser in the middle
class. I have sure as hell appreciated this view all winter, stuck in a
wheel chair looking out of the window. It was this sunny even as the rest of the world
was buried in snow!"

*
The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

*
The
original "View From Your Window" series was created by blogger Andrew
Sullivan.Please check out the "View
From Your Window" photos he posts on his Atlantic Monthly blog,
which are sent in by readers from all around the world.

Myth & Moor

by Terri Windling

I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts. I workin the New York publishing industry but I live in aDevon village at the edgeof Dartmoor with my English husband, dramatist & puppeteer Howard Gayton, our daughter, Victoria Windling-Gayton, and a joyful hound named Tilly (a Springer Spaniel/Labrador cross).

The 37th International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts: I'm delighted to be Guest of Honor in 2016 along with writer Holly Black and fairy tale scholar Cristina Bacchilega. ICFA is held annually in Orlando, Florida in March. Further information on the 37th conference will be posted soon.

Other events in 2016 are still being confirmed, so please check back.

Take a stroll through our village (and its environs) by visiting my neighbors' blogs & sites:

"As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth...the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times." - Gary Snyder

"People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand - what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for - Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.” - Terry Tempest Williams

"This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories." - Ben Okri

"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion." - Barry Lopez

Bookshelf

The Wood Wife:A mythic novel set in the Sonoran desert of Arizona. This link goes to the US edition; a UK edition is available here; and the new French edition is here. (For those who might be interested, I did a Q-&-A session on the book over on the Good Reads site.) Winner of the Mythopoeic Award.

Welcome to Bordertown:The latest volume in a classic Urban Fantasy series for YA readers. (An Audie Award nominee, for the audio book edition.) For information on the previous books, visit the Bordertown website.)

All told, I've published over forty books for children, teenagers and adults. More information on my writing, editing, and art can be found on my website.

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Please note that these books are linked to Amazon because it's the only book linking system that Typepad (this blogging service) has,but I urge you to please support your local bookstore if you plan to purchase any of the books mentioned on this blog.

Links to:

The Endicott StudioThe nonprofit organization for Mythic Arts that I ran for 22 years (starting in 1986), co-directed with author & folklorist Midori Snyder. The organization is currently on hiatus (while we catch our breaths and make a living), but a great deal of material from our Journal of Mythic Arts archive remains online.

Interstitial ArtsEllen Kushner, Delia Sherman, & other good folk look at writing and art in the interstices between genres. I was one of the founding board members, and remain an enthusiastic supporter.